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Electricity Bill Validation
The bill arrives and gets paid. Nobody checks whether it is correct — because checking it means knowing in advance how it should have been calculated. We already do.
The only way to check a bill is to rebuild it
A commercial electricity bill is not one number. Inside it sit the wholesale cost of the energy actually consumed, the network charges, the levies, the capacity charges, the penalties and the taxes. Each one arrives from a different source under a different rule.
That is why looking at a bill and deciding whether it is “about right” is not possible. To know whether it is right, you have to rebuild the same period independently — from your own half-hourly data, from published prices, and from the tariff in your contract.
We are already doing that calculation. Bill validation is simply the act of holding it against the bill that arrived.
Most of the bill is not the energy
On a typical commercial supply in Great Britain, the commodity — the electricity itself — is a minority of the total. The rest is network, levies and taxes, and each of those follows its own rule and its own timetable.
| Line | Our calculation | The bill | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumption | 412,860 kWh | 412,860 kWh | — |
| Energy charge | £41,698.86 | £41,698.86 | — |
| Distribution (DUoS) | £6,204.31 | £6,204.31 | — |
| Capacity charge | £1,845.00 | £1,845.00 | — |
| Excess capacity | £0.00 | £2,317.40 | +£2,317.40 |
| Climate Change Levy | £3,201.66 | £3,201.66 | — |
| Total | £52,949.83 | £55,267.23 | +£2,317.40 |
Illustrative figures showing the shape of the output, not a customer’s bill.
Everything reconciles to the penny except one line. That difference is not a rounding error and not a mistake in the arithmetic — it is a charge that needs explaining.
A correct calculation can still be a wrong charge
Validation is not only an arithmetic check. Even where every figure adds up, the bill may carry a line that your contract does not permit.
The excess capacity charge above is one shape of this. The figure may be calculated perfectly and still be wrong, because the question is not whether the sum is right — it is whether the charge belongs to you at all. Imbalance costs are the classic case: under most fixed contracts they sit with the supplier, and passing them through requires an explicit clause.
The platform flags lines of this kind and tells you to check the contract. Where there is no deviation at all, an informational email still goes out — silence is not the same as a clean result, and you should be able to tell the two apart.
What is compared against what
Validation plate
- Consumption
- kWh
- Half-hourly meter data · via letter of authority
- Energy charge
- £
- Consumption-weighted price × contract terms
- Network charges
- £
- Published distribution and transmission tariffs
- Levies
- £
- Capacity Market, CfD and related pass-through
- Capacity
- £
- Agreed capacity vs measured maximum demand
- Reactive power
- £
- Power factor against the charging threshold
- Taxes
- £
- CCL and VAT · on the correct taxable base
Every validation runs against the values published for the period being checked, not against today’s.
One thing worth being direct about: the platform’s tariff library was built for the Turkish market, where it is maintained continuously. For Great Britain the network tariffs, levy rates and CCL bands are loaded as part of onboarding — the method below is the same, but the reference data for your region is set up before the first validation runs, not assumed to be there.
Missing a deviation is worse than raising a false one
The gravest failure in validation is not noticing. So the comparison does not simply check the grand total: any single line that clears the threshold counts as a deviation. Otherwise two errors pointing in opposite directions cancel out and hide a real one.
Where our calculated base is zero or undefined and the bill charges money anyway — very common on capacity and reconciliation lines — a percentage is meaningless, and the absolute threshold stands on its own.
Thresholds are set per site. The default is 0.1% and £250 together; both have to be exceeded before a deviation is raised.
How it is used
When the bill arrives you upload the PDF. The platform reads the formats it has been configured for; where a format is not recognised you enter the lines by hand, and validation runs exactly the same way. That route is always open.
The result sits on screen line by line and is kept. A deviation past the threshold opens an alarm record and sends an email. No deviation but a contract flag still produces an informational email.
Over time the accumulated history becomes the basis for the conversation with your supplier: you are no longer arguing about one month, you are showing a series.
What setting this up requires
Three things, and they are worth stating plainly before you ask.
Access to your half-hourly data. In Great Britain that means a letter of authority so the data can be collected on your behalf. It is a signature, not a project.
Your contract terms. Unit rates, the agreed capacity, what is passed through and what is not. Validation is only as good as the terms it validates against, so this part is done with you rather than assumed.
The reference data for your region. Distribution and transmission tariffs, the Capacity Market and CfD rates, CCL bands. As above, these are loaded during onboarding rather than shipped ready — we would rather tell you that now than have you discover it in month one.
Supplier bill layouts are configured at the same time. If yours is one we have not seen, the first month is entered manually while the format is added.
Common questions
Our finance team already checks the invoices. What would change?
Finance checks that a bill is consistent: do the lines add up, is the VAT right, when is it due. What they cannot check is whether the lines are correct — that needs the consumption data, the published prices and the contract terms in front of you at the same time. We are already looking at all three.
How do you read our bill?
PDFs in a configured format are read directly. Where the format is not recognised you enter the lines yourself and validation runs identically. Identifying details — supply number, meter, period — are taken from the bill itself, which stops the wrong bill being validated against the wrong site.
What happens when you find a deviation?
An alarm record opens and an email goes out saying which line deviated and by how much. The next step is yours: query it with the supplier or ask for an explanation. We show the deviation; we do not raise the dispute on your behalf.
Can you check bills retrospectively?
If the meter data goes back that far, yes. Without the data there is no validation — we do not produce a calculation that has no source.
Will it generate false alarms?
Thresholds are adjustable per site; by default 0.1% and £250 must both be exceeded before anything is raised. Our bias is nonetheless clear: we would rather report a suspicious line than stay quiet about one. A missed deviation costs more than an extra notification.
Let us measure what is happening on your site.
In a one-hour call we look at your existing setup and set out exactly which measurement points are needed and what you would be able to see.